Hair styling is a major world industry that includes, among other things, salons, schools, beauty products, beautician instruments, and manufacturers of beauty products and instruments. As such, there are millions of workers in the hairstyling industry worldwide. Typically, barbers, beauticians and hairstylists, who comprise the largest set of hairstyling industry workers, perform their services while standing up. This allows the worker to move around the client as the worker cuts or styles the client's hair. Remaining standing up also gives the worker the freedom of movement to pick up and put down instruments, such as scissors and blow dryers, and wield his instruments for use on his client. This position further allows the worker to interact with his client at eye level, which facilitates the client-hairstylist relationship. Standing up for long periods of time while working, however, can have drawbacks.
A person who stands up during an entire work day can become tired and experience fatigue. This can affect a worker's ability to perform hairstyling services and his ability to follow his client's directions and properly interact with the client. Further, a person who stands for protracted periods of time can experience health effects such as swollen legs, swollen ankles, back pain and painful lower extremities. As a result, many hairstylists must often take breaks during a work day and either sit in chairs or lie down. This reduces their ability to produce and therefore negatively impacts revenue. If the negative health effects of standing up for long periods go untreated, a worker can become injured and lose his ability to work for a certain period of time, or worse, permanently.
One approach to this problem is the use of conventional chairs. At times, a hairstylist will sit on a chair or stool while attempting to perform his hairstyling duties. There are, however, problems associated with this solution. A worker that is sitting down cannot move around his client as he cuts or styles the client's hair. Also, while sitting down, the worker does not have the freedom of movement to pick up and put down instruments and wield his instruments for use on the client. Lastly, the sitting position does not allow the worker to interact with the client at eye level. Therefore, the use of a conventional chair while performing hairstyling services is limiting to the worker and thus is not often used.
Consequently, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above, and particularly for a more efficient way to facilitate the process of providing structural support to hairstylists while they are providing hairstyling services.